A paradigm in the development of new diagnostics and therapies for human diseases and disorders is the characterization of the gene expression of defined cell types. The cellular complexity of many tissues poses a challenge for those seeking to characterize gene expression at this level. The enormous heterogeneity of a tissue such as the nervous system (thousands of neuronal cell types, with non-neuronal cells outnumbering neuronal cells by an order of magnitude) is a barrier to the identification and analysis of gene transcripts present in individual cell types. Cellular subtypes are highly heterogeneous and often intermixed. Gene expression studies on isolated cells have been limited by stresses introduced during cellular isolation procedures, the adaptations which occur upon the loss of tissue-intrinsic signals that control cellular physiology in vivo, and the technical challenges associated with reproducible mRNA purification from fixed tissue. A method to isolate translated mRNAs from defined cell types and subtypes without the need for cell isolation is needed in order to define previously undefined cell types, identify molecular targets for diseases and disorders, and provide a way in which to identify co-regulated gene sets for a particular biological function. The invention is described here.